Painting a legacy: South Whidbey artist still going at age 104

Although Whidbey Island is home to hundreds of artists, likely few have been creating art for as long as the painter Gaylen Hansen.

The 104-year-old South Whidbey artist recently celebrated his birthday and the opening of a new exhibition at Woodside/Braseth Gallery in Seattle, where he has displayed his work over the past couple of years.

A prolific painter, Hansen is known for his narrative style, creating depictions of the natural world and its inhabitants with careful attention to brushstrokes. His works likely number in the thousands and his son, Brett Hansen, is currently in the process of putting an inventory and history together, which he attested has been a project spanning six months.

Though quite secretive about what he’s currently working on — at least when visited by a Record reporter — Hansen is happy to sort through stacks of his past works, pausing to admire each one as he reverently uncovers it. The bulk of his collection dates back to previous decades.

“Anything that gives me a feeling that I amount to something, is good to keep my spirits up and to have a big collection of my work, even though most of it’s been bought, is necessary to my mental health,” he explained. “Besides, I like it. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it.”

Often, there is humor lurking beneath the surface of his work, and he admits he has a reputation for being “kind of funny.”

“This commemorates one of my smaller catches,” he quipped of a piece that shows a massive green fish caught on a fishing line. Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of perspective, and the fish only seems larger than the man.

Any representation of a human that makes its way into his work is represented by the Kernal, which Hansen described as a sort of metaphor. People like to look at his paintings to find out what the Kernal is up to lately.

“The Kernal is head of a fortress and the Kernal gets up every morning, eats breakfast and then saddles his horse and goes out to see what he can discover,” he said. “It obviously stands for what humans do.”

Grasshoppers, too, figure prominently in his artworks, as do coyotes and horses. There’s something pastoral about his choice in fauna, no doubt shaped by his upbringing on a farm in Garland, Utah. In the days before World War II, Hansen was raised as a cowboy, saddling up the work horses and guiding them through the fields, in addition to helping with cattle drives.

Art has always been at the center of Hansen’s life. From a young age, he drew images based on illustrations in The Saturday Evening Post, a popular magazine of the time. His grandfather advised him not to pursue a career in art, saying 95% of people who do won’t make a living.

“I didn’t sell a damn thing in the first 30 years of my painting life,” Hansen said.

But he admitted, “I did get some money when three paintings that I loaned to people got burned up in their house, and I got the insurance from them.”

It’s safe to say he’s come a long way since then. Dedicated admirers and art collectors, some of them celebrities in the Seattle scene, flocked to the opening of his new exhibition just a few weeks ago. It features 38 paintings created between 1995 and 2025.

“Many art devotees in the Pacific Northwest had not fully grasped the extent of his national and international reputation, and I felt deeply committed to presenting his work with the visibility it deserved,” Director John Braseth said.

Hansen’s first show at the Woodside/Braseth Gallery in 2024 sold out within three days. It featured large-scale paintings, some of which stretched 10 feet wide. Throngs of his former students attended the exhibition; Hansen taught at Washington State University from 1957 until 1982.

His teaching career spanned four decades. In an academic setting, students expect a set of criteria to follow to get a good grade, Hansen recalled, but it could be challenging because someone might not follow all the rules and come up with something spectacular. And in some cases, such rigid expectations did not allow for a lot of creative experimentation.

Hansen’s late wife, Heidi Oberheide, was also an artist and her work has been displayed at some of the same galleries, including at Woodside/Braseth. She was best known for her exploration of color relationships and elemental forms, and her loss was a devastating one.

“Gaylen and Heidi were inseparable in life and in art — each the other’s muse and mirror,” Braseth said.

Seeking a change in scenery, the artistic couple moved from their home in the hills of the Palouse – a region in Eastern Washington – to Whidbey in 2014. They liked the island for its “country feeling” and smaller population. Hansen admired the old growth forest in South Whidbey State Park, which inspired new paintings he’d never done before in the eastern part of the state.

“We loved to hike, we loved to sit and look at what’s in front of us and it’s amazing how different it can be from one time to another,” Hansen said. “It’s full of surprises.”

Hansen has remained active in his advanced years and can still walk a mile or two in a single day. His son, Brett, recalled him going on a six-mile hike in his 90s at Multnomah Falls in Oregon, which has trails with an elevation gain of several hundred feet.

“He’s totally tuned into the visual way more than the average person,” Brett remarked proudly of his father.

Changes to his vision haven’t stopped him from continuing to create, albeit on a smaller scale than his earlier years.

“I used to wonder if I should get older, I wasn’t thinking about 100, but I would think, could I paint if I get to be in my 90s?” Hansen said. “And then I pick up a brush – well, that’s not very heavy.”

Spend a few hours with him and he’ll tell you countless stories about past students, other legacy artists, principles of art and art history that he shares freely.

His work can be found in major museum collections across the nation, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum and the Boise Art Museum — as well as in collections abroad.

“Today, at 104, he remains one of America’s most beloved and enduring painters — his imagination as vigorous as ever,” Braseth said.

When asked about the secret to living a long life, Hansen said, “I advise everybody to try and stay healthy and positive, if you can.”